Lines in the Sand
by Grav
Summary: He learns very quickly to pick his battles.


**AN**: Yeah, because I'm getting over Normandy any time in the immediate future. But I have questions! Questions that need answering! And...also there's porn. ;)

This is loosely based around a ficlet I wrote for the porn battle called Communication, and contains another ficlet for the same challenge called Machination. The 1908 section is inspired by **penknife**'s Understanding, and there's a bit of her Morale in the 1944 section. The 1949 section is inspired in part by **artaxastra**'s Three. There may be others I've forgotten. Frankly, at this point I've pretty much forgotten who said what first.

**Rating**: M, with a side of kleenex warning.

**Disclaimer**: *sighs*

**Spoilers**: Normandy

**Characters/Pairing**: Helen/James, James/John, hints of James/Nikola and James/Declan, Will, Nigel, Jeanette

**Summary**: He learns very quickly to pick his battles. 

* * *

><p><strong>Lines in the Sand<strong>

_1890 – There is a murder in Edinburgh that no one can solve._

The world has long since stopped making sense. All he can see are his notes, spread out across his desk so that he doesn't have to look at the pictures from the newspaper clippings he's collected. He hasn't been invited into this investigation, for starters the focus is in Edinburgh and not London, and no one else has put the pieces together yet, but he can't stop himself. The Ripper is killing again.

He didn't really think that Helen had managed to kill him, that night in the alley two years ago, though they had both pretended they did. She shot too high, she told him. Used to heavier weaponry than the small pistol she'd been able to conceal in her skirts, she'd overestimated the weight of the pull, and fired off target. That is the story they're sticking to.

It's an easy thing to believe, sometimes. In the daylight when they're entertaining select scientists with slightly edited stories of their work; happy afternoons spent in drawing rooms and lecture halls around London. In the dark it's harder to avoid the truth, for all he attempts to drown it in copious amounts of cocaine. He's hadn't had many sober moments since he read the paper two, no, three, three days ago.

His office door is locked, a futile gesture given that Helen holds all the keys to the house and employs several staff members who have little problem turning entire Scottish pines into matchsticks. It's a sign, more than anything else, that he needs to be alone, and a sign that Helen has so far respected. There was some polite knocking the first evening, and an enquiry as to whether he wanted dinner on a tray, but since then there hasn't been any indication that the world at large misses him any more than he misses it.

Now, though, everything throbs. He reaches for the needle again, to blunt that overwhelming press, and finds it empty. He can't remember where he's put the rest. Eventually, he realizes that the throbbing in his head is not actually _in_ his head, but rather originates on the door. Someone has finally decided that enough is enough.

It's probably not Helen. She doesn't mind the drugs, but she'd have absolutely no patience for him like this. She can't watch his pain because it's too much like her own. It's probably that strapping Hibagon that followed Gregory Magnus home from the Orient a few years back. James is already bracing himself for the smell the poor creature can't help emitting when he's concerned about something when the lock gives way.

God help him, it's Helen after all. He doesn't get up from his chair, not even when she reaches across him for his notes and the paper clippings and sweeps them all into her gathered skirt. Not even when she dumps the whole lot into the fireplace, and turns towards him, ready to scold or ignore or send him straight in after them.

It's her expression that goads him past what's left of his reason. Part _don't you dare do this to me_ and part _why don't you take me with you_, and he absolutely cannot cope with that right now, so he does the only thing he can think of, and presses her up against the mantelpiece, his mouth falling on her neck even as his hands pull at her dress.

He expects to be rebuffed, likely with nothing short of a knee to the groin, but the blow never comes. She doesn't respond at first, probably because she's as surprised as he is, but once the shock of the moment wears off, her fingers find the buttons of his waistcoat with a surprising degree of familiarity.

He can't imagine he's particularly deft, and he knows he has only a theoretical knowledge of what he's doing, but he quickly finds that there are certain things that transcend gender, and when he slides his fingers along the inside of Helen's thighs, she reacts much the same way –

No, there will be none of that. Instead he wends his way past the last layer of her undergarments and finds her more than ready for him. She's still working on the catch of his trousers, fingers scrabbling over the fabric and buttons before she gives up and settles for sliding her hands inside with bothering to unfasten anything else. He tries very, very hard not to think about how she got so good at this, which is only fair as she is likely trying to do the same thing.

He's in no state to hold on, once she's started working him with her hand against the fabric. She doesn't seem to mind, so long as he holds his hand steady, and rocks against him with a ferocity that would surprise him if he didn't know exactly who she was. Despite that, he comes before she does, and stumbles back away from her as the aftershocks roll through him. He's still not anything like sober, but he's closer to lucidity than he had been before, and so he dares to look at her.

She's flushed and still looking annoyed, though that could be for any number of reasons, but there's something else there too. She rights her own clothes as much as she can, he's torn more than a few seams, and refastens his waistcoat as though he were a patient. Then she takes him by the arm and leads him firmly out of his office, away from the smoking ruin of his obsession and the empty drug paraphernalia.

He's all the way into her bathchamber before he realizes that's where they're going. She turns on the water, it won't be hot at this time of night but that might not be a bad thing, and sits on the high backed chair in front of one of the mirrors. Clearly, she has no intention of letting him drown himself in her bath. He strips and climbs in, his shock at the cold muted by the stupor of the drugs and the odd afterglow from what they did downstairs.

She leaves him to dress once he's safely out of the water, but when he would have gone to his own room, she draws him into her bed instead. She stays on her own side of the invisible line down the middle of the mattress, save for the hand that ventures over to twine fingers with his beneath the coverlet.

"This," she says, when she's sure she has as much of his attention as he can muster. "is not over." 

* * *

><p><em>1893 - When it becomes apparent that Gregory is never coming back, Helen's grief mostly channels itself into fury that he hadn't taken her with him.<em>

"Dr. Watson, I don't know what happened. One moment everything was fine and then – " The elderly heliopath is dripping fire all over his rug, frantically stamping at the burgeoning flames every time she sees one. He'd never liked the design anyway, and can't really see the harm in a few randomly places scorch marks.

"It's perfectly all right, Lucilla," he says. "Dr. Magnus has been on edge these past few weeks. It has absolutely nothing to do with you."

"But she said." Lucilla rings her hands, raining button-sized sparks down on the carpet. He really ought to put a stop to this before the whole Sanctuary goes up in flames.

"I know what she said." It's possible they heard her in Portsmouth. "And in a few weeks she'll feel as terrible about it as you do now, I promise. In the meantime, I believe it's been a while since anyone inspected our holdings in Cornwall. Perhaps you would like to conduct them?"

At this rate, there will be no one in the London Sanctuary left by week's end. James has already dispatched most of the staff on various make-work projects around the continent, and frankly, he's running out of valid excuses to give jobs to people. He'll have to start offering holidays soon.

"That does sound good," Lucilla says. "I mean it does sound like a good idea, Dr. Watson."

"Excellent. I shall make arrangements for a private coach." A thought occurs. "Should you require assistants, please feel free to take whomever you wish. Let me know the final number as soon as you can."

"Thank you," Lucilla says, and is gone to plan, leaving James with a smoking carpet and too many thoughts.

He gives Helen another hour to cool down before making a somewhat hesitant approach. She's still in the lab, though she's moved to one of the chairs by the fire instead of hovering over the workbench. There's no one left to ring for in the kitchen, Lucilla was mercifully thorough, but James isn't completely hopeless and a career in chemistry has at least guaranteed that he can brew a decent pot of tea.

They sit there with their cups as though there is absolutely nothing wrong, which sets James on edge almost immediately, and by the time he's down to the dregs he's thinking that maybe he ought to have gone to Cornwall as well. Things have never been exactly awkward between them, not even the first morning James woke up in her bed to find her curled rather intimately around him, but this is the first time he's ever felt as though there's something he ought to say to her, and he can't for the life of him imagine what that might be.

Afternoon wanes into evening as they discuss various experiments, politics, and the economics of running an increasingly large operation. They do not talk about his work at the Yard, nor about anything that could even remotely be tied back to Gregory. Against his better judgement, James finds he is relaxing, able to convince himself that all she really needed was this calm distraction and in the morning her world might have righted itself.

She turns down his offer to find something for a late dinner, which is probably fortunate for both of them, and instead excuses herself to bed, despite the early, for them, hour.

He only pauses for a moment before he follows her.

They've never done this uninvited before, though he wouldn't go so far as to say they've ever talked about it either. Rather, it became habit, but never something either of them has taken advantage of or treated lightly. He knows before the door has closed behind him that tonight he is going to have to seduce her, and three years ago the prospect would have terrified him, but James has always been a quick study.

He takes his time, peeling back layer upon layer of fabric and feeling until they're both bared to sheets and skin, her blonde curls spread across the pillows like a halo and her eyes closed against the delicate pressure as he pushes inside her. It's as slow and tender as he's ever managed, though towards the end some her fire reasserts itself and it ends in something closer to passion than usual. After, she clings to him, head tucked under his chin so that he breathes in the rosewater scent of her hair. Her apparent vulnerability nearly destroys him, but he can't bring himself to leave her like that, so he wraps himself around her.

It's nights like this when he feels an especially strong hatred for John Druitt. 

* * *

><p><em>1908 – Helen? Are you all right?<em>

He doesn't have to be the smartest man in the world to know that she's not sleeping alone tonight. And he knows exactly why she's not sleeping with him.

She moved past anger the night she shot John Druitt in an alleyway in Whitechapel. Seeing his face again, irrevocably scarred by her complete rejection of him, would not be enough to rekindle that. It might, however, be enough to reawaken the black depression she's usually so good at fighting off. Which is why she's gone to Nikola. Someday, if circumstances allow, he might even consider doing that himself.

Now, though, he's angry, his anger burning too close to his regret to really be useful to anyone. He's surprised he managed to remain civil up to John's departure, and if Helen had come to him tonight, he's fairly sure it would have ended badly for both of them.

That doesn't stop him from wanting it, though. Or, if not that precisely, something like it. Something he doesn't have to explain or struggle to give reason for. He feels sharper than he has in two decades, closer to the edge of true satisfaction, except there's no one for him to find satisfaction _with_.

Times have changed since he was at Oxford, but not that much, not enough for it to make his predilections any easier to bear. There are still parties he could attend, if he wasn't worried about what any unfortunate gossip would do to the Sanctuary, still codes he could decipher to determine who is likewise disposed. He's out of practice, but that's easily remedied.

He can't bring himself to turn to the needle because he can never seem to control the outcome, so he settles for more brandy in the dark. He had told Helen he planned to make notes, but now that he's alone, he can't even bring himself to do that much. All he wants is release and there will be none forthcoming.

He'll admit to a quiver of fear when John arrived in the parlour, in the conventional way, thankfully. When they'd been friends, John had been careful never to let his emotions for James overlap with what he felt for Helen. James understood, as much as he could, and didn't really hold it against either of them. But if John knew what his lovers had turned to in his absence, he might not be so restrained.

_Restraint_. The word floats around in James's mind before another rapidly downed brandy connects it to his frustrations, and he finds the picture of John held back, somehow prevented from intervening while James ploughs a very, very willing Helen right in front of him burned into his brain. It's enough to make him hard, and as he strokes himself, he imagines the noises of his own making are emanating from an increasingly frustrated, and powerless, John.

When he comes it's entirely not enough, for all he's almost pleasantly relaxed by the release. He's honest enough to admit that's a large part of the problem, but between that and the alcohol, he thinks he might be able to manage a dreamless sleep before waking and having to face the world again.

He doesn't remember the last time he slept alone. 

* * *

><p><em>1934 – What they have is comfortable. Practical, even. Necessary.<em>

Helen threads kisses down his body, weaving in and out of the plastic tubing and around the metal protuberances as if they've always been a part of him. He feels like she is kissing someone else, some_thing_ else. It's like the machine they designed to save his life has in fact stolen it, and is returning it to him in paltry amounts, doled out on a careful schedule guaranteed to make his life as long and as lonely as possible.

He is not afraid of death, not exactly, but Helen has made it quite clear that she is not prepared to accept him getting old and leaving her without a fight, and at the time, the machine had seemed like a good idea. But now that he's woken up to its clockwork horror, monitoring his heart and his lungs and every single fluid he produces (and some the machine produces for him), he's a little bit appalled.

Helen's tongue traces down his arm and lavishes attention on each finger, and he wonders if she's tasting skin or metal or some ungodly hybrid. The hair on his knuckles responds, tickling awareness up to his elbow, and he decides that has got to be a good sign. He's trying to breathe normally, but then he realizes that the machine is _making_ him breathe normally, and he wonders if everything he does will be so precisely accounted for from this point on.

He is going to punch Nikola the next time he suggests that James's penchant for organization leans to the side of obsessive.

Helen's hands have got ahead of her mouth, which surprises him for some silly reason, and so his brain is not quite finished figuring out how to process the kisses on his chest, around the edges of the apparatus, when it is assaulted by the sensations caused by her fingers wrapped around his length.

James expels a breath that's nearly explosive in relief, and lets his head fall backwards into the pillows. It feels the same.

"I told you," Helen breathes, and James tries to voice his agreement but fails completely to actually form the words. She smiles against the skin of his stomach, and trails kisses along his hip while her hands work him until he's hard in her grasp.

He wants very badly to roll her over and lay her out, as she's done to him, and to make her feel that same sense of reality, but he's not entirely sure he can bend that way anymore, and he'd rather die than break the moment, so he lets her take him into her mouth without adding any of his own interference. Instead, he does his best to hold his head up so that he can watch her.

He twists his fingers into her hair, not hard, and revels in the fact that he can feel a hundred distinct strands at the same time. His pulse sounds loudly in his ears as she works him with her mouth, and there is nothing mechanical about it, save a slight pressure against his chest that might be his own anticipation anyway.

His hands tighten in a warning he can't voice, but she ignores him and swallows when he comes. He feels boneless, wonders if the machine understands repletion beyond the sense of an expended power source, and his head falls back into the pillows once more. This time, Helen follows him up, arranging her body around his so that they can sleep as any two lovers might, despite their somewhat unorthodox arrangement.

She sleeps first, underneath the soft covers that mask the metal contraption he has made himself into, because he cannot stop listening to the sound of the machine whirring about to accompany his breaths. The sound of her breathing, the feel of her rise and fall, gradually takes over, and he finds that he can force his own breathing to match hers, machine be damned.

By the time he falls asleep, James Watson feels entirely human.

* * *

><p><em>1944 – "Darling, are you all right?"<em>

No, no he really is not all right. And it will probably be a very long time before he is all right again.

The last time they saw John Druitt they had the buffer of murder for hire between them. Somehow, an entire continent at war isn't enough to provide the same feelings of distance, probably because James spent so long trying to forget what John's touch felt like, and now he's been all too well reminded, and it came with a side of pain unlike anything he'd ever felt before. The weaknesses of his solution to getting older have been made all too apparent, and he has a few ideas for redundancies, but this is hardly the time or place to really deal with them.

Instead, he hunkers down beside Nigel as best he can with his wounded leg, and waits for the signal that their extraction team has arrived. Nigel's far from being an idiot, so he doesn't say anything until Nikola steps into the clearing as though he were taking a Sunday stroll.

"Bloody bastard," Nigel whispers, a mix of annoyance and genuine affection in his voice. They had argued hard for Nikola's inclusion on this mission, but not even James's extensive list of the ways in which a preternaturally fast and strong vampire would be useful had been enough to sway Ike and the other general staff. James knows it's because they're afraid of losing Nikola again, but every twinge in his chest makes him more resentful that they sent the three of them off without him.

"I've forgotten the password, but if you don't come out you can walk home," says Nikola, his voice as dark as the night, and James knows he's not exactly human at the moment, though he can't figure out exactly why. "I'm really not in the mood to wait."

Beside Nigel, Jeanette sights him down her rifle, but Nigel puts his hand on the barrel. "This is him being nice," he says in a way that's probably intended to be reassuring. "Trust me."

She says something in French that's not intended for polite company, and Nikola laughs from fifty yards away.

Nigel walks towards him, and Jeanette follows him. It's amazing, James thinks, not for the first time, what fighting a war in your own back yard will do for a woman's sense of fear. They didn't have time to tell her that much about Nikola, but _vampire_ is very nearly self-explanatory.

James leans on Helen as they walk towards Nikola, and he can see how Nikola's eyes skirt all of them, looking for whatever harm John will have inflicted before coming to rest on his leg. He snarls, almost too quietly to hear if James didn't know what to listen for, and then turns towards the soldiers who are starting to trickle out of the woods behind him.

"Let's get a move on," Nikola says. "It's a long boat ride back, and I was in the middle of several things when we left."

It's a lie, of course. James has no idea how much they had to stroke Nikola's ego to make him stay in Portsmouth, and he clearly made for France as soon as it was remotely feasible. He imagines there's a story there, but he's far too exhausted to hear it. Nikola takes his other shoulder, bearing most of his weight, though Helen doesn't leave his side. Beside them, Nigel and Jeanette are having a quiet, though somewhat frantic, conversation.

"I'm staying," Nigel announces.

"What?" Helen says, more because he caught her off guard than anything else.

"Nigel, this is your only chance to get out," Nikola says. "We have indications that the Nazis are going to fight very hard for Carentan. After tonight, extraction might not be possible."

"I know that," Nigel says, looking at Jeanette. "That's why I'm staying."

Nikola stalks into the forest, muttering swear words in Hungarian and French.

"Good luck, Nigel," Helen says, with a quick hug. She nods to Jeanette, the understanding of common battles arcing between them stronger than words ever could.

"Do not die," James says, because it's really the only thing he can manage at this point.

"I'll make a special point of it," Nigel replies, and then he disappears into the woods with the rest of French Resistance fighters.

Helen takes James's weight again, and they follow Nikola to the coast where a small boat awaits them. It's far from glamorous, but home waits at the end for them, and that is enough to keep James from losing what's left of his nerve. Helen holds his hand until she falls asleep curled against him, like she never plans to let him go, but it's Nikola's attention James can't seem to shake.

They'll talk about it when they get home. Or perhaps not. 

* * *

><p><em>1949 – He's never been the wanderer.<em>

"I've been thinking," Helen says one cold morning, late in the year. Coal rationing is a thing of the past and the electric heating is more or less reliable, but there's something to be said for huddling together under the eiderdown in the grey London twilight.

"My dear, I'd be surprised to learn you ever stopped," he says, because they've been doing this for so long now that they very rarely say something they are not supposed to.

"We're well established in France, now, thanks to Jeanette and Nigel, and the rebuilding in London is going to plan." She trails fingers along his arm, and he knows exactly where this is going. "I think it's time I relocated to North America. The West Coast, I mean. New York is doing well enough without us hovering over them."

"We would benefit from a greater presence there," James allows. Her skin is as smooth and warm as it had been in 1892, and he presses light kisses along her collar bone. "Perhaps Canada."

"Living in the mountains has an appeal," she says, tracing the lines of plastic tubing that run down across his chest and down his arms, reassurance after what happened in Carentan. "I imagine that there would be all manner of interesting abnormals living at altitude."

She needs to get away and, in a very particular way, he needs her to leave. They are both so close to healing, but they've done as much for one another as they can, and he's sure she understands that as well as he does. They've tried, of course, to move on, but with proximity against them, it's damnably hard to find reasons not to hold her on cold mornings like this.

So she packs and he determines how to separate her finances from the Sanctuary's, so that she can take what's hers and invest it in her new location. She ends up leaving many of the objects they've acquired over the years to him, and tells him she's looking forward to furnishing her own space with things made in the 20th century. She might even be telling the truth, but he's choosing not to look too closely at her motivations for leaving some of her treasures and heirlooms behind.

The last night before she's due to depart they don't get very much sleep. Instead she sits in a chair by the fire, and he sits with his head against her knee, as they might have done had they been lovers in another age. She runs her fingers through his hair until he surprises himself with his need for more contact, and carries her to bed like they're playful children again. She laughs at him for it, and he wonders absently why he didn't spend more time trying to make her laugh when it would have meant something.

For the first time, there are no spectres in bed with them, and he finds genuine peace in her arms, knowing she's done the same.

In the morning, he puts her on a ship, and it's years before they see one another again. 

* * *

><p><em>1985 – Most people go back to their oldest contacts for solace, Helen<em>

She's pregnant.

Moreover, she must have been pregnant the _last_ time he saw her, because he can still _count_ and he's not stupid. And she didn't tell him, which can only mean one thing.

"So you've finally decided to do it, then," he says as coldly as he can manage once they're away from her staff and secure in the privacy of her sitting room.

"Yes, James, I have," she says, a layer of false placidity in her tone indicating that she is not in the mood for an argument.

"Well congratulations, my dear, belated as they are." He can't help twist the knife. "Though I suppose you've waited long enough that she'll call you 'mom' and be terrifically ill-mannered."

"I decided it was time," Helen says. "Brandy?"

"I'll join you with tea, I think," he says, and she pours him a cup. The butler, a creature he can't name and who obstinately refuses to let James call him anything directly, has left a tray within easy reach before he retreated to someplace where he's less likely to be injured in the crossfire. "I should show my support somehow."

She sets his cup down hard enough that it rattles in the saucer and glares at him, then looks down at the bulge where her waist had been.

"I didn't know what to tell you," she says finally, her voice so uncharacteristically quiet that he is immediately regretful of what he's said, except he's still a little angry about it. "I decided I was through with being lonely."

He swallows his first reply to that, an indignant claim that she has always had him, because they've proven time and again that that's really not enough for either of them. He knew that this would happen someday, knew it when he'd helped her with this mad plan in 1888. Someday, he would have to face John's child, either because they had accidentally killed her or because Helen had somehow managed to bring her to term.

"You could have asked," he says quietly, as gently as he can.

"I couldn't bear the thought that you might say no," she replies, equally soft. She looks up at him, and for the first time in a century, she's just Helen again, pushing boundaries and hoping for the best.

He moves to kneel in front of her, and kisses her stomach even as he takes her hands in his. "You know as well as I do that I've never had that power," he says.

She laughs, and draws him up to kiss her properly and he doesn't hold anything back when he does. He has _missed_ her, more than he ever thought he would, and even though they see each other at every opportunity and he's actually managed to fall into something like love a couple of times in her absence, there's something to be said for _this_.

Later, in her bed, he can't stop touching her abdomen, and he knows that for some reason he can't even begin to understand, he's grinning like a lunatic. She's smiling too, but there's a familiar fear in her eyes, and it's one he can't pretend he's not feeling too.

"You'll stay?" she says.

"Of course," he says, already having made a list of things he'll have to tell his people in London so they can continue without him for a few more months.

She smiles, and he kisses her again.

"She'll be yours in every way that matters," he says, and for a long time, they both believe it. 

* * *

><p><em>2007 – Would you care to switch<em>

He's thought about this a lot over the years. Not morbidly, of course, but practically. He needs to have plans in place for his eventual demise, and he's spent several decades ensuring that the whole of the London Sanctuary won't immediately fall apart when he dies.

His good-bye to Declan is far more personal than he had thought it would be, but once Declan puts together that the suit is failing and his guesses about who James will be seeing in Old City, there's really no way around it. Declan surprises him, which he hadn't thought was possible, refusing to let James say his farewell until he'd given an explanation, and then it's far too easy to pull him into bed again, and Declan goes willingly, even though it's been years since they shared this.

He tries to tell Helen, but she's not listening and he can't bring himself to be more direct because then she'll try to save him, and he's not sure he wants that. Dying has a certain grace, it turns out, and he sits across from John with the machine exposed on his chest as though John had never undressed him thus for a Nazi interrogator and elicited agony from him to keep up the act. Young William thinks they're merely baiting one another, and in a way, that's exactly what James is doing, but the stakes are much higher than anyone knows.

When John takes his shoulder, gently for the first time in decades, he very nearly relents. But if Helen saves him, his forgiveness will be meaningless. He knows he could never maintain it, never truly forgive John unless one of them was dead. Maybe that makes him a coward, but he's tired, and he's spent his whole life never really getting what he wants, and he's determined to die on his own damn terms.

He never for a moment imagined that he would die with all of them there, with Nikola looking on like he doesn't understand that people die, and Helen holding his face as though there were something she could do, and John watching them all like he belongs with them again. His only whisper of regret is that he's missing something, but he's so pleased with his own demise that he can't really bring himself to care. He tells Will, and he hopes that will be enough, but he refuses to let cold reality interfere with the last moments of his life.

His chest is so heavy, the machine a millstone around his neck, but he's never known peace like this. He can imagine that Nigel is there too, invisible and solid and the only sane one of the lot, though maybe dying makes him sane too. There are tears in Helen's eyes, and in John's too, though he hides them better, and Nikola still looks so confused that James is almost tempted to laugh, except that he thinks it might be in poor taste. The weight presses down everywhere at once, and it's darker than it had been when he collapsed.

_I love you_, he thinks, and means it to all three of them. And that's the end. 

* * *

><p><strong>finis<strong>

Gravity_Not_Included, May 29, 2011


End file.
